dearly--suppose they were positively the dearest people who ever walked
the earth--and that breaking your neck for them was the greatest pleasure
life could confer upon you--what would you do _then?_"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Beason, bluntly; "I never loved any one
that dearly."

"'Tis better to love and break one's neck,"--began Harry Wyman, who
aspired to the position of class poet.

"If you had ever known Ernestine and Karl,"--a tenderness creeping into
Georgia's voice--"you'd be _almost_ willing to hunt houses for them.
Almost, I say--for I doubt if any affection on earth should be put to the
house-hunting test. Even my cousin Dr. Karl Hubers------"

"Your--_cousin?_"--Beason broke in. "_Your--?_"--in telling the story
Georgia always spoke of the unflattering emphasis on the final your. But
at the time she could think of nothing save the transformed face of John
Beason. The instantaneousness with which he had waked up was fairly
gruesome. He was looking straight at Georgia; all three were held by his
manner.

"Now my dear Mr. Beason," she laughed finally, "don't be so hard on
us. My mother and Dr. Hubers' mother were sisters, but please don't
rub it in so unmercifully that poor mother has been altogether
distanced in the matter of offspring. You see mother married an Irish
politician--hence me. While Aunt Katherine--Karl's mother--married a
German scholar--therefore Karl. And the German scholar was the son of a
German professor. In fact, from all I have been led to believe the Hubers
were busily engaged in the professoring business at the time Julius